A South Florida driver said a promised bonus followed a bogus misconduct complaint and emptied his Uber wallet before the company restored the money.
MIAMI, FL — A South Florida rideshare driver said he lost $2,059 after a caller posing as Uber support told him he was under investigation for drinking on the job, then offered a cash bonus that led to a string of transfers from his account.
Peter Detore’s case shows how a familiar scam can hit workers who depend on app-based platforms for side income. The caller used a false safety complaint, followed up days later and then gave Detore what appeared to be instructions inside the Uber app. By the time he checked his balance, he said, his Uber wallet was empty. Uber later said his account had been compromised and issued what it described as a one-time appeasement payment of $2,060.
Detore, who drives for Uber part time to earn extra cash, said the fraud began in December with a phone call from a man claiming to work in Uber’s security division. The caller told him a complaint had been filed accusing him of drinking while driving, a claim serious enough to threaten a driver’s access to the platform. Detore said he believed the contact was real because the caller sounded official and framed the conversation as a safety matter. He said the man told him his activity would be monitored while the issue was reviewed. A few days later, Detore said, the same person called again with what sounded like good news. The caller said he qualified for a cash bonus for the inconvenience caused by the complaint process. “The first phone call I got was a guy who claimed to be an investigator with Uber’s security division,” Detore said, describing a pitch that shifted from discipline to reward.
To receive that supposed bonus, Detore said, he was told to enter a gift card number provided by the caller into the Uber app on his phone. He followed the directions, thinking he was completing a routine company step tied to the promised payment. Instead, he later saw transfers begin to move out of his Uber wallet in amounts ranging from about $100 to more than $300. The withdrawals did not hit all at once. He said they appeared over the next couple of weeks, which made the loss harder to catch in a single moment. When he finally reviewed the balance, Detore said the money was gone. “So, I looked at the account, and it was empty,” he said. In total, $2,059 was transferred to an account he said he did not recognize. The public account of the case does not identify where that receiving account was held or who controlled it.
The case follows a pattern consumer agencies have been tracking for years in business imposter scams, in which thieves pretend to represent a company, government office or trusted institution to push victims into fast decisions. The Federal Trade Commission has said imposter scams ranked among the top reported fraud categories by dollar loss in the United States, with consumers reporting nearly $2.7 billion in losses in 2023. In Detore’s case, the pressure point was not a fake invoice or a demand to send cash. It was access to a worker’s earning platform and a claim that a safety complaint had put that access at risk. That detail matters for gig workers because account warnings can sound plausible and urgent. The use of a promised bonus also gave the scheme a second layer, turning fear into relief just before the money disappeared. Public reporting on the case did not say whether Detore shared a password, a one-time code or other login detail during the exchange.
Uber said it was in contact with Detore after he reported what happened. In a statement provided through a company spokesperson, Uber called the incident frustrating and said scammers keep changing tactics to lure innocent people. The company said it routinely reminds drivers not to share personal account information such as passwords or verification codes and said it would never ask for that information in that way. After NBC6 Responds contacted Uber about the case, Detore said he received an email from the company stating that it had discovered his account was compromised. The message said Uber would issue a one-time appeasement of $2,060, effectively covering the loss he reported. The company also told him that if he received a suspicious call in the future, he should hang up and contact Uber support directly. Neither the public report nor the follow-up account explained whether Uber identified the person behind the transfers or whether any internal review changed account security settings after the breach.
Cases like this also show the uneven ground on which many app-based workers operate. For a part-time driver, a few thousand dollars in an in-app wallet can represent weeks of earnings, fuel costs, or money set aside for household bills. Unlike a one-time retail purchase, the stolen funds in this case sat in an account tied directly to work already completed. That makes the loss both financial and personal. It also highlights how scammers increasingly borrow the language of platform safety, customer complaints and account reviews to make fake outreach sound routine. Uber’s own help materials warn drivers that suspicious activity can include unexpected calls, emails or texts about account information, along with changes to payment details or passwords a driver did not authorize. Detore’s account fits that broader pattern. What remains unclear is whether the fraud started with stolen account data, a successful social engineering call, or both. No public court filing or law enforcement record was identified in the reports available about the incident.
For now, the immediate procedural step appears to be complete. Detore reported the loss to Uber and also contacted a local consumer investigative team, which then approached the company on his behalf. Uber restored the money through the one-time payment and acknowledged that the account had been compromised. What comes next is less certain. The available reports do not say whether Detore filed a police report, whether any criminal investigation was opened, or whether the transfers can be traced to a named suspect. They also do not say whether Uber has changed any policy or app flow in response to this case. Still, the matter has moved from an unexplained drain on a driver’s earnings to a documented compromise recognized by the platform itself. That distinction is important because it places the incident in the category of account fraud rather than an unexplained customer dispute. The next concrete milestone, based on the public record, would be any further statement from Uber or any law enforcement disclosure identifying who received the stolen funds.
Detore said the experience left him stunned, especially because the call at first sounded like a normal review of a customer complaint. “I was kind of still in kind of shock that something like this could happen,” he said. That reaction is part of why imposter scams can be hard to stop once they start. They are built to feel ordinary at the beginning, then urgent in the middle and reassuring at the end. In this case, a fake accusation opened the conversation, a promised bonus kept it going and the transfers appeared only after the trust had already been built. The scene itself was not dramatic, with no street confrontation or stolen vehicle to mark the moment. It was a phone call, an app, and a balance that kept shrinking. The visible ending came later, through emails, a media inquiry and a reimbursement that brought the account back to where Detore said it should have been in the first place.
As of mid-March, Uber had restored the money and acknowledged that Detore’s account was compromised. The next public development would likely be any statement identifying how the breach happened or whether investigators can trace the account that received the $2,059.
Author note: Last updated March 23, 2026.